Doom's raised arm did not lower, when Bellion refused to answer his taunt, refused to close the distance and offer the fight he'd been baiting for, Doom simply decided to force the matter. He came forward himself, fast, faster than his bulk should have allowed, closing the gap in a handful of thunderous strides before unleashing a destructive punch.
Bellion met it.
Not with his blade, the sword stayed exactly where it was, held, almost forgotten, in his right hand, but with his free fist, catching the massive blow head-on and redirecting it with a twist of his whole body, absorbing what he couldn't deflect. The impact still rattled through him, still cost him ground, but he held.
"So that's how you intend to do this," Doom's silence seemed to say, in the only language a being without a voice could speak through the sudden, redoubled violence of his next strike, a kick aimed low that Bellion caught on his shin, grunting audibly through the effort of stopping it.
What followed was unlike anything Bellion had shown all day.
He fought with everything except his blade. Fists, driven with the same skill and precision he'd shown against H'El, though considerably harder-won here, meeting Doom's monstrous strength blow for blow. Knees and elbows thrown in tight, brutal combinations whenever Doom closed the distance too far for a clean punch. Even his wings became weapons in their own right great black shapes snapping forward, to redirect Doom's momentum at crucial moments, to shield him from strikes he had no other way of escaping.
Through all of it, the sword never left his hand. It hung there, seemingly useless, an afterthought, even as its owner fought a war with every other part of himself.
They took the battle to the sky.
Doom seized him at one point, both massive hands closing around Bellion's shoulders, and simply hauled him skyward with brute force, carrying them both hundreds of feet above the arena floor before slamming a knee into his ribs hard enough to crack audibly through the air. Bellion answered with fists to Doom's jaw, his wings beating furiously to maintain what control he could over their shared, chaotic trajectory, and still, through the violence of it all, his blade remained in his own grip, unused, untouched, gathering something most of the watching Marshals could yet see.
They crashed back down together, tearing a new crater into the arena floor, and the fight simply continued from where it left off, fists, knees, wings, every tool available to Bellion except the one everyone expected him to use.
It was during one such exchange, mid-air, locked in a brutal grapple neither of them could fully break, that Doom finally found his opening. His massive hand closed around Bellion's free arm and simply tore, the limb coming away at the shoulder in a violent spray of shadow, Bellion's pained shout tearing across the sky. He barely had time to register the loss before Doom's other hand caught two of his four wings and wrenched, severing them at the base with the same brutal violence.
Bellion fell.
He caught himself before the ground, his two remaining right wings flaring wide to arrest the plummet, but the loss was immediately, visibly apparent his flight pattern unsteady now, listing, deprived of the balance and control four wings had given him. His severed shoulder and wing-stumps should have already been knitting closed, shadow-matter surging to regenerate the lost limbs the way it always did.
It wasn't happening. Not quickly, at least. The healing crawled forward at a fraction of its usual speed, sluggish, starved, as though something else was drawing away the reserves that should have fed it.
Among the watching Marshals, H'El's composed expression finally broke into realization and, close behind it, a slow, appreciative smile.
"So that's how it is," he said. "He's still doing it. Even now, mid-fight, he's pouring everything into that blade instead of his own attacks." He shook his head slowly, equal parts impressed and disturbed. "What a risky, risky move."
Bellion, deprived now of two wings and an arm, could no longer maneuver with anything close to his earlier grace, could no longer fight in a way that had made him so difficult to pin down all day. He drifted, unsteady, his single remaining hand keeping the sword close but doing nothing more with it.
Doom, watching him falter, seemed to recognize victory settling within reach for the first time since the match had begun.
He drove one massive fist into the stone itself not as an attack, but as a tool, tearing an entire section of the arena's floor free in a single, monstrous effort, a boulder half the size of the battlefield itself, hefting it overhead with a roar that shook the surrounding spires.
Gasps rippled through the watching Marshals.
"What a monster," Ultra breathed, staring up at the massive slab of stone. "He's just going to crush him."
Beru's mandibles clicked rapidly, torn between alarm and admiration. "Such raw strength..."
Galatea's jaw tightened, her eyes fixed on Bellion's faltering, one-armed, two-winged form standing helplessly below the rising boulder. "He can't dodge that.."
Above, Didi's hands had curled tight against the platform's edge, her earlier amusement entirely gone. "He is done for."
Arthur said nothing. His eyes remained fixed on Bellion, calm and entirely unbothered by the sight.
Doom hurled the boulder down.
And in that same instant, Bellion's blade ignited.
Violet light split down its length, black lightning crackling and spitting along the steel with a violence that hadn't been present in any of his earlier strikes, the accumulated weight of every ounce of mana he'd been withholding all fight finally, fully unleashed in a single, blinding surge. He moved not away from the boulder, not in retreat, but directly toward Doom, closing the last of the distance in a streak of black feathers and crackling light even as the massive slab of stone descended toward him.
The boulder crashed down over him at the exact moment his blade found its mark.
The sword drove into Doom's chest, punching clean through with a force that defied its owner's ruined, exhausted body, and then, impossibly, it shifted the rigid length dissolving into its whip-form even while buried inside him, the crackling black lightning tearing upward through his shadow bone body in a single, continuous, merciless arc that split Doom apart from chest to skull in one moment.
The boulder struck.
The impact was catastrophic. The already-ruined arena floor buckled entirely, a crater tearing open wide enough to swallow half the battlefield, the shockwave rolling outward with such force that it collapsed a section of the arena's outer stands, sending shadow soldiers scrambling and scattering as stone and debris rained down across the crowd. Smoke and dust billowed skyward in a column that blotted out the violet twilight entirely, swallowing the center of the arena from view.
For a long, breathless moment, no one, not the Marshals, not the watching soldiers could tell what had just happened.
"What the.." Galatea started, staring into the smoke, unable to finish the thought.
"Did either of them.." Ultra began, equally lost.
Igris said nothing, his eyes narrowed, fixed on the roiling dust, waiting.
Slowly, the smoke began to clear.
Doom lay motionless amid the wreckage, split cleanly from chest to skull into two separate, ruined halves a wound that would have been instantly, permanently fatal to anything that was not a being of shadow and second lives. A few feet away, Bellion lay on his back amid the crater's rubble, missing an arm, missing two wings, utterly still.
His sword lay several meters distant, still crackling faintly with dying threads of black lightning, thrown clear by the impact.
Silence held the entire arena in its grip.
Then, slowly, agonizingly, Bellion moved, his remaining arm pressing flat against the shattered stone, levering himself upward by degrees, every move clearly costing him everything he had left. He couldn't rise fully. His legs wouldn't hold him. He settled, at last, into a kneeling position, his single hand braced against the ground, his head bowed, his whole body trembling with the effort of simply remaining upright.
Then Igris spoke first, "He is the last one standing," he said. "You all know what that means."
Most of the gathered Marshals remained quiet, still processing the sheer scale of what they'd just witnessed.
Above, Arthur raised his hand. The restrictions he'd placed on both combatants lifted at once, and the effect was immediate and total Doom's ruined body surged back together in a violent rush of shadow, the terrible wound sealing closed as though it had never been; Bellion's severed arm and lost wings regenerated in the same instant, knitting whole again in a matter of seconds. The arena floor itself followed, cratered stone and collapsed stands smoothing back into their original, unbroken form.
Arthur's voice rolled out over the fully restored arena and even the world of eternal slumber as a whole, carrying to every shadow soldier gathered within the arena and beyond it.
"Bellion," he announced, "is the new Grand Marshal of the shadow army."
The response was immediate and overwhelming. A roar of acknowledgment rose from the assembled shadow soldiers, thousands of voices raised in unified acclaim, the sound rolling outward across the Realm like a wave. The Marshals themselves joined in, one after another even Doom, fully restored now and standing once more, inclined his massive head toward Bellion in silent, unmistakable respect.
High above, Didi let out a slow, disbelieving breath, shaking her head.
"Well," she said. "Look at that.. None of us were right afterall, a waste of a bet.."
Arthur's smile was quiet, his eyes still resting on Bellion as the newly named Grand Marshal rose, to accept the acclaim of the army he now commanded.
"I underestimated his tenacity," Arthur admitted. "His will." He watched Bellion a moment longer, admiration in his expression. "Strength alone can only carry a being so far.. I should have remembered that better than anyone."
/-\
If you Like this story! Check out my other stories! Shadow Monarch: In One Piece / The Witcher: Heir of Fire!
&
If you wish to read more or simply support me than check out my p@t-reon / FrenzyAren"
You can Get Access to 7 More Chapters on all of my stories!